The conditions of social hardship and impoverishment of pensioners in recent years are increasingly worsening due to the tax burden and the insufficient adjustment of pensions to the cost of living. This is stated by the report "Fiscal policies, indexation and progressive impoverishment of pensions" produced by CUPLA in collaboration with the CER - Europe Research Center - and presented today in Rome.
According to the report, the increase in local surcharges and the failure to recover the fiscal drain have reduced purchasing power especially for the 7,4 million pensioners, 44% of the total, who live in semi-poverty with a gross pension of less than 1.000 euros monthly.
The impoverishment of pensioners is not just an effect of the growing tax burden. The mechanism for the annual adjustment of the value of pensions to inflation has not protected neither low-value pensions, nor medium- and high-value pensions.
The area of hardship grows primarily among the poorest pensioners, due to the sole effect of the tax levy, the lowest pensions have suffered a loss of purchasing power of 4%. Furthermore, the poorest pensions are now more than three percentage points below the absolute poverty line. A gap determined entirely in the last ten years. Pensions above €1.500 no longer enjoy a full recovery from inflation. The resulting loss with respect to the trend in consumer prices is substantial, ranging between 2 and 7%. The reduction in purchasing power was particularly pronounced in 2010-2013, ie at the height of the economic crisis. In the future, the measures introduced with the 2014 finance law will further accentuate the loss in value of pensions.
In the face of this situation, outlined in detail in the report, the solutions that CUPLA proposes to the Government on behalf of the more than five million pensioners represented, are clear and of the utmost urgency.
In the first place the CUPLA proposal is by gradually adjust the minimum pension benefits to 40% of the national average income, i.e. from 500 to 650 euros per month, as the European social charter asks us, moreover.
To defend pensions, especially the lowest ones, more attention must also be paid to the indexation mechanism. The increase in the cost of health services, nursing homes, the cost of access to the national health service affects retirees to a greater extent than the rest of the population. These items should find greater recognition in the pension adjustment system.
The reduction in the tax wedge envisaged only for employees with a monthly salary of up to 1.500 euros, who have recovered 80 euros a month, must also be extended to pensioners starting from the lowest income brackets. CUPLA believes that limiting the intervention to employees only is an unjust measure and not in line with the objective declared by the Executive of social support and the revival of consumption. Moreover, this would widen the gap already existing between workers and pensioners on the share of income exempt from taxation (no tax area). This is why CUPLA believes that in order to re-establish a minimum of equity and social justice, the extension of the no-tax area to at least 13.000 euros (an amount equal to twice that of the minimum annual treatment of INPS pensions) can no longer be postponed.
Finally, CUPLA asks the Government and local administrations to provide deductions for the purposes of paying the Tasi for the elderly who live alone in their own home and have incomes below double the minimum treatment (13.000 euros) if single or three times the treatment minimum (19.500 euros) if as a couple, and to exclude the elderly who are not self-sufficient or hospitalized in rest homes from the tax
